Facebook Etiquette
Posted by Corey on November 30, 2009
I expect to get some heat for this post; however, this issue has been eating me up lately. The topic: Facebook and “Friends.”
Before I begin, let me say that I think these types of social networking sites are some of the greatest assets on the Web - at least for what they were designed to do. They are a great way to get/stay in touch with an old friend, classmate, colleague, or relative. They provide an excellent way to gather interest in a cause or let people know about an upcoming event. They are not, however, a substitute for the interpersonal communications required by authentic relationships. Unfortunately, we tend to treat Facebook as a way to conduct our friendships.
More specifically, I have been having a problem with the way that we accept people as friends or ask to be someone’s friend. For instance, when someone asks you to be a “friend” on Facebook - and you agree - I think it’s appropriate to confirm him or her AND THEN ADD a nice, quick message. This is a great time to actually see how someone is doing or what she has been up to. To me, it’s lame to just accept that person and move on with your life as if the request never happened. If we say nothing, it’s as if we are just accumulating friends for no particularly worthy purpose. This is likely why the people who sneaked into the White House last week have thousands of new Facebook friends. Is allegedly committing a federal offense really something worthy of beginning a new friendship?
To me a real friend is someone who rushes in to be with you when everyone else rushes out of your life. A friend is someone who is there when no one wants anything to do with you. Perhaps Facebook chose the wrong word to capture what is really happening on its site. Perhaps acquaintance would be more appropriate. Perhaps we should be able to confirm someone into one of two categories: (1) Real Friend / (2) Mere Acquaintance. For Real Friends, the website would force us to write a message. You know, it works for Twitter. It would be a little nudge towards actually building a friendship. For Mere Acquaintances, we could just confirm them as we confirm people today - as if it mattered as much as flushing the toilet.
Do me, your friends and yourself a favor and send a quick reply whenever you accept or make a friend request. This might mean more to the person on the other side of the monitor than you will ever know.
Corey,
I just added you as a friend on facebook and then was reading some of your blogs and I want to make sure that you know that I don’t want to be your friend just to accumulate friends. I think you’re a great person and you’re a wonderful husband to one of my oldest friends. This is why I want to be your acquaintance, if not your friend. I hope that is a good reason and I look forward to further ethicsposts and facebook comments =)
~ Meredith
Hey Professor C,
Hope you’re having a good evening. After reading you post on facebook I began to reflect on what I do when accepting friends. I agree with the degree of friendships as an offer like twitter, yet at the same time I believe that privacy settings is the way facebook copes with that issue. The great thing about facebook to me is networking and in order to network I never actually know these people I would like to network with on a first name basis.
Blake
I think that Facebook definitely has its ups and downs. It bothers me a little when people really talk down on it because I use Facebook to keep in contact with friends and relatives I don’t get to see often. It seems to get its bad name from people who use it to gossip with people from school or just try and rack up their friends list. I find it strange when I get friend requests from people that I am not friends with in real life. For example, I often get requests from kids that go to the high school that I went to. It’s weird because even if I know who they are, I am not already friends with them. I think Facebook is a great place to keep in contact with people I don’t see all the time, not to make new friends that I’m never actually going to talk to. I do agree that if a friend sends you a request, it is polite to send he/she a message if it’s accepted.
I definitely see your side of this issue. I think this alternative that you suggest is very creative and I it is a good idea to actually see how people are doing from time-to-time. However, I think a lot of people would simply choose “mere acquaintance” rather than “real friend” just to simply avoid having to write a personal note. Another issue I think would arise is what if one person considers someone a “real friend” but the other considers that person a “mere acquaintance”…then things get awkward. If there was some way to prevent this from happening, I think this would be an excellent idea because personally, my biggest concern are people who accept others as friends and they don’t even know who they are. The reason why I love facebook is because it does help me keep in touch with my friends in an easy and convenient way. I also reconnect with past friends who have moved-away or fell out-of-touch with and it’s always interesting to see where people are in their lives. I agree that peope should make more of an effort to actually reconnect with their “friends” rather than simply add them as a friend and never talk to them. This method you suggest would be a good alternative because it would force people to interact with those they call their “real friend”, however I also know that people don’t like to be forced to do anything. I do believe that people should really think about what you’ve said and take it to heart. Facebook is suppose to be a place where friends reconnect and people cannot reconnect if words are not exchanged.
I think this idea is great, people do need to communicate more with those they call “real friends”. However, the problems I foresee happening are 1) people would simply add people was “mere acquaintances simply to avoid having to communicate and 2) what happens when one person thinks someone is a “real friend” while that other person only thinks of them as a “mere acquaintance”…then thing start to get awkward. Although, personally I wouldn’t mind doing something like this, I also know that people don’t like to be told what to do. I think that people do need to actually communicate more with their friends rather than just simply having it facebook state that their “friends”. However, people need to come to this realization themselves. I think that facebook is a great way to reconnect with past friends and rather than simply adding them as a friend. People should take the time to ask how their doing and see how their lives have changed since the last time you saw them. I know I’ve reconnected with friends and family over facebook and it’s a great and easy way to stay connected with them. All it takes is a short message. I like the idea that has been presented about the choosing people was “real friends” and “mere acquaintances”, but rather than forcing people to send a message (that might not even be sincere), people need to that realization themselves.
Personally, I do not have a facebook, nor do I have any interest in getting one. I know they say that it is easy, and it is fun, and it is a ‘great way to stay in touch,’ but to be honest most of the people that I would stay in touch with solely through facebook, I would not want to keep in my life. In reality though, not having a facebook is a great way of weeding unnecessary people out of my life. I remember senior year of high school, where everyone is upset because they fear that they will never see certain people again due to the college separation process. I was asked repeatedly why I wouldn’t get a facebook in order to stay in touch by these people. I simply told them that if they truly wanted to see/hear from me again, they would call me, or let me call them, and proceeded to give them my number if they didn’t have it already. I think that if you cannot take the time to really have people in your life, they don’t need to be there at all. This includes calling, and getting together in person. Technology is making it easier to take any emotion and personalization out of conversation and relationships–and it’s scary because it is turning us into technologically advanced illiterates. I believe that we are losing our ability to speak among people, because we are too accustomed to hiding behind a computer monitor. I would assume everyone understands how much easier it is to say certain things through an email than over the phone, and especially face to face. Is ease necessarily a good thing? I wouldn’t say so. I have even vowed to never ask a girl out in text or over the phone. Difficulty builds strong relationships. Only relationships that we are required to work at and fight for are worth having. If you aren’t riding a roller coaster, then you don’t know that person well enough. This is why I am a firm believer in the quality over quantity aspect of relationships. Facebook is nearing too high of a priority for many people. I have difficulty with people at DU and their incessant need to text as their primary means of mobile communications. I have even been deemed ‘at fault’ because I didn’t let certain people know I didn’t have text on my phone. Since when has the primary function of a phone been texting? If anything, people with texting should say they have it, not assume everyone else has it. I don’t have text, facebook, twitter, or myspace (the abandoned amusement park of the social networking sites) and I do not wish to have them. I feel I have developed more meaningful and deeper relationships without them, than someone with them could ever hope to develop. I do not have anything against social networking sites, but every once in a while, taking a mere minute out of our ‘busy’ lives to call or see someone can show them you care much more than sending them a poorly written, incomplete, apathetic, message.
I believe that Facebook was at first created for people to connect with a mass number of people and network but today has grown into replacing real face-to-face interaction among “Friends”. This technology as well as text messaging is hurting genuine relationships amongst people involved in your life. I have stopped using Facebook because I, along with most of the population, started using it to have short meaningless conversations with mostly “mere acquaintances” and spending less time building on real relationships with close friends that I have and my family. I believe that Facebook can still serve a purpose to connect with old friends and network on the basis that most of these people are not true friends but in reality just people you know that don’t have a great meaning in your life. It is truly up to the individual whether to be on Facebook all day talking to supposed “Friends” or to spend meaningful time with the people in your life that really matter. It would be a good idea for Facebook to make you comment on people you add as “Friends” or change the “Friends” heading to either “mere acquaintance” or maybe something like “people I know” or “people I have met” to avoid hurting the feelings of people you know on Facebook or like Jackie Leung said making it awkward.
I believe that Facebook has become a replacement for meaningful relationships by many users. This idea to use technology like Facebook, instant messenger, or text messaging in place of genuine relationships is ridiculous. The original intent of Facebook to me is to get in touch with people you haven’t talked to in awhile or networking but today has been used by the masses to post short meaningless comments back and forth to so called “Friends”. Facebook should make users who accept friend requests comment on on their new “Friends” profile or these people should not be your true friends if you’re not even going to talk with them. Facebook presents a problem in itself because to me you are trading 10 meaningful individuals in your life for 100 people that you might have met but know basically nothing about. This is not to say that the 10 original close friends or family members would become mere acquaintances but you would not spend as much genuine time and energy staying close with them. I believe that Facebook should rename the “Friends” heading to people I have met or people I know and you should be able like in facebook to create a “Top Friends” list so you and others know who is very close to you but could also make things awkward for people not on the list that consider you one of their “Top Friends”. In my opinion Facebook is diluting the idea of real friendships to having many more acquaintances and hurting the very important social structure of relationships altogether.
When I was in high school, I refused to get a facebook account, but now that i have had the opportunity to meet people in different states, I believe that Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with people. There are some rules that i have made up for myself while using Facebook. First of all, I do not add people that I don’t know. Second, mere acquaintances are not added unless it comes with a message specifying why they want to be friends in the first place. Third, Every six months of so, I review my friends list and if there is anyone there that I haven’t talked to, texted, seen, or emailed with in the past six months, they are deleted.
Facebook is a great tool to keep up with friends that because of life, they had to move somewhere else. It’s a great way to look at pictures, and to be able to comment on them. There has been times, where friends have all commented on one post and it reminds you of the good times that you shared with these people, in one instance, the post had comments from people from different states to include: Alaska, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and New York. Facebook is a good place to vent, it gives you the opportunity to share information quickly and it allows you to share stupid happy thoughts that might make someone’s day!.
Reading this made me think a lot about the friends that I have on Facebook. There are so many people in my “Friends list” that I hardly know at all, have met once before, or that I knew for a short period of time and have not talked to them in years. I know Facebook was invented to keep friends and family in touch after they part ways, however it seems that it has gotten incredibly twisted into a completely different thing than it was intended. In the past few months I have often thought about and wished that my Facebook friends list consisted of only people that I am truly friends with. I have considered creating a new page and deleting my old one so that I can stay in touch with only the people whom I truly know and care about. On the other hand, it is flattering to know that people want to be friends with me. I think that in order to add someone as a friend most people have some interest in knowing and being around the person that they add. What you mentioned about sending someone a message after they add you or visa versa, I think that is an extremely good idea. Not necessary if the person who adds you is someone that you see everyday, but definitely if it is not. So often people add me and I accept their friend request and then never talk to them again. I wish this was not the case. Facebook should be a tool to keep friends and family in touch yet it has become a place for people to waste time and “chat” with the people whom they should be out talking to in real life.
Sorry, I’m going to move slightly off the main focus of your post and address what Matt said about why he does not have a Facebook and why I disagree with his point (of course I realize that the ultimate decision is his). For me, it comes to down to geography. Sure, there are plenty of people that are my friends on Facebook but I could care less about what they’re up to or staying in touch with them (I do try and weed these people out fairly regularly) but there are those that I really want to know what’s going on in their lives and with them. Now in high school I had a close knit group of 4 other friends. It would take a long time to call and talk to each one of them every time they caught up, especially if you factor in every time they call each other to catch up with each other (25 calls all around). Facebook makes it so much easier. I can see what my close friends write on each others’ walls, I can see the pictures or videos of the things they are doing and involved in (something that’s very hard to do over phone), and I can have a private conversation with all of them through a message thread. The phone and personal interaction has it’s place, but Facebook does too, and its only solidifying it’s position there.
I think that Facebook is really turning into a popularity contest, and this is really beginning to bother me. It is all about who has the most friends, most pictures, and most dumb stories on their wall from their drunk experience. Also it turned from a networking site, to a site to post up garbage that no one actually cares to see. I know that I have deleted all the people that I do not keep in touch with because, I really don’t care to see what they are up to, and never really have wanted to know either. It’s college, we all do the same stuff, just some people are smart enough not to be dumb and post it on facebook.
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